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Rats & Jackals. The first help for Agadir came from the nearby French naval airbase, which sent trucks, stretchers and fire-fighting equipment. From three U.S. bases came 300 men with bulldozers, generators and portable operating rooms. Moroccan soldiers poured in the next day. The badly injured were flown out to Casablanca and Rabat 50 at a time, but the planes arrived with many dead. Other wounded lay on stretchers in the streets, calling for water during the stifling heat of day, moaning in the cold of the African night. Rats and jackals dug for food in the ruined city, and weakening voices still cried from the tumbled buildings in French, Arabic, German, Swedish and English. The exhausted rescue teams working under the blazing noonday sun wore wet handkerchiefs across the lower parts of their faces in a futile effort to cut down the dreadful stench.
Sprinkled Lime. The recovered dead were put to rest in mass graves. A U.S. bulldozer scraped a trench 2 ft. deep, up to 100 ft. long and 10 ft. wide. Moroccan soldiers rolled the dead in, while their dazed relatives mourned in the background. When the ditch was filled with bodies, it was sprinkled with lime, and the bulldozer covered the open grave with tons of dirt. Religious scruples complicated the gravediggers' job. Imans insisted that Moslems be buried close to the surface in accordance with local tradition in Agadir, thus increasing the danger of plague. Jews begged that their dead fellow men be buried separately from the Moslems and Christians.
Few of the living could see any future for Agadir. King Mohammed V of Morocco pledged his personal fortune to start the rebuilding of the city. But one survivor said in anguish: "The only thing I'm thinking of is getting away, really away. The quicker they destroy this place the better. I doubt if they can ever get rid of the odor." At week's end, as it was feared that the toll of dead might mount above 10,000, a French café owner uttered Agadir's epitaph: "We were a peaceful union of Moslem and Christian, Arab and European. This was a prosperous city, and we had a future. We worked and behaved ourselves. We were growing. What in God's name do you suppose we did wrong?"
* Known previously to aging history students as the site of a crisis that almost precipitated World War I. In 1911, as France was extending its influence over Morocco, Germany sent a small warship to Agadir to protect the "lives and property" of German merchants. British pressure finally produced a settlement.